Evaluating Civic Open Data Standards

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Renee Sieber and Rachel Bloom at SocArXiv Papers: In many ways, a precondition to realizing the promise of open government data is the standardization of that data. Open data standards ensure interoperability, establish benchmarks in assessing whether governments achieve their goals in publishing open data, can better ensure accuracy of the data. Interoperability enables the use of off-the shelf software and can ease third party development of products that serves multiple locales.

Our project aims to determine which standards for civic data are “best” to open up government data. We began by disambiguating the multiple meanings of what constitutes a data standard by creating a standards stack.

The empirical research started by identifying twelve “high value” open datasets for which we found 22 data standards. A qualitative systematic review of the gray literature and standards documentation generated 18 evaluation metrics, which we grouped into four categories. We evaluated the metrics with civic data standards. Our goal is to identify and characterize types of standards and provide a systematic way to assess their quality…(More)”.

Is Open Data Working for Women in Africa?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Web Foundation: “Open data has the potential to change politics, economies and societies for the better by giving people more opportunities to engage in the decisions that affect their lives. But to reach the full potential of open data, it must be available to and used by all. Yet, across the globe — and in Africa in particular — there is a significant data gap.

This report — Is open data working for women in Africa — maps the current state of open data for women across Africa, with insights from country-specific research in Nigeria, Cameroon, Uganda and South Africa with additional data from a survey of experts in 12 countries across the continent.

Our findings show that, despite the potential for open data to empower people, it has so far changed little for women living in Africa.

Key findings

  • There is a closed data culture in Africa — Most countries lack an open culture and have legislation and processes that are not gender-responsive. Institutional resistance to disclosing data means few countries have open data policies and initiatives at the national level. In addition, gender equality legislation and policies are incomplete and failing to reduce gender inequalities. And overall, Africa lacks the cross-organisational collaboration needed to strengthen the open data movement.
  • There are barriers preventing women from using the data that is available — Cultural and social realities create additional challenges for women to engage with data and participate in the technology sector. 1GB of mobile data in Africa costs, on average, 10% of average monthly income. This high cost keeps women, who generally earn less than men, offline. Moreover, time poverty, the gender pay gap and unpaid labour create economic obstacles for women to engage with digital technology.
  • Key datasets to support the advocacy objectives of women’s groups are missing — Data on budget, health and crime are largely absent as open data. Nearly all datasets in sub-Saharan Africa (373 out of 375) are closed, and sex-disaggregated data, when available online, is often not published as open data. There are few open data policies to support opening up of key datasets and even when they do exist, they largely remain in draft form. With little investment in open data initiatives, good data management practices or for implementing Right To Information (RTI) reforms, improvement is unlikely.
  • There is no strong base of research on women’s access and use of open data — There is lack of funding, little collaboration and few open data champions. Women’s groups, digital rights groups and gender experts rarely collaborate on open data and gender issues. To overcome this barrier, multi-stakeholder collaborations are essential to develop effective solutions….(More)”.

Data infrastructure literacy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Jonathan Gray, Carolin Gerlitz and Liliana Bounegru at Big Data & Society: “A recent report from the UN makes the case for “global data literacy” in order to realise the opportunities afforded by the “data revolution”. Here and in many other contexts, data literacy is characterised in terms of a combination of numerical, statistical and technical capacities. In this article, we argue for an expansion of the concept to include not just competencies in reading and working with datasets but also the ability to account for, intervene around and participate in the wider socio-technical infrastructures through which data is created, stored and analysed – which we call “data infrastructure literacy”. We illustrate this notion with examples of “inventive data practice” from previous and ongoing research on open data, online platforms, data journalism and data activism. Drawing on these perspectives, we argue that data literacy initiatives might cultivate sensibilities not only for data science but also for data sociology, data politics as well as wider public engagement with digital data infrastructures. The proposed notion of data infrastructure literacy is intended to make space for collective inquiry, experimentation, imagination and intervention around data in educational programmes and beyond, including how data infrastructures can be challenged, contested, reshaped and repurposed to align with interests and publics other than those originally intended….(More)”

Open Data in Tourism

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

European Data Portal: “New technologies are rapidly changing the tourism industry. Data are central assets in management and marketing of tourism destinations and businesses. Data driven services became a prominent tool for tourists to plan their trips. The study “Utilizing open data in tourism” predicts great potential for Open Data to increase innovations and destination management. Several actors already use Open Data to provide services in the tourism industry, e.g. the open service called Helsinki Region Infoshare from the city of Helsinki. Malta and Montenegro, for example, are providing data sets on tourist expenditure, hotels, accommodation, restaurants, events, bicycle stations, heritage sites, or beaches.

But not only government organisations and companies use Open Data in tourism. User-generated content, such as reviews and comments spread via social networking services, supports Tourists’ decision making. The study “You will like it!”  analyses user generated Open Data to predict tourists’ perception of sights or attractions.  Thereby they are contributing to the process of predicting tourists’ future preferences, what has potential implications and benefits for the tourism industry.

Engage in the discourse of Open data in tourism, for example on 18 July: the meeting “Linked Open Data im Tourismus“for destination marketing organizations (DMOs) takes place  in Innsbruck to discuss possibilities and prerequisites for using Open Data in tourism. If you rather try out using Open Data to plan your next weekend trip, visit the European Data Portal featured data article on  “Use Open Data to prepare your holiday trip”….(More)”.

Microsoft Research Open Data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Microsoft Research Open Data: “… is a data repository that makes available datasets that researchers at Microsoft have created and published in conjunction with their research. You can browse available datasets and either download them or directly copy them to an Azure-based Virtual Machine or Data Science Virtual Machine. To the extent possible, we follow FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable) data principles and will continue to push towards the highest standards for data sharing. We recognize that there are dozens of data repositories already in use by researchers and expect that the capabilities of this repository will augment existing efforts. Datasets are categorized by their primary research area. You can find links to research projects or publications with the dataset.

What is our goal?

Our goal is to provide a simple platform to Microsoft’s researchers and collaborators to share datasets and related research technologies and tools. The site has been designed to simplify access to these data sets, facilitate collaboration between researchers using cloud-based resources, and enable the reproducibility of research. We will continue to evolve and grow this repository and add features to it based on feedback from the community.

How did this project come to be?

Over the past few years, our team, based at Microsoft Research, has worked extensively with the research community to create cloud-based research infrastructure. We started this project as a prototype about a year ago and are excited to finally share it with the research community to support data-intensive research in the cloud. Because almost all research projects have a data component, there is real need for curated and meaningful datasets in the research community, not only in computer science but in interdisciplinary and domain sciences. We have now made several such datasets available for download or use directly on cloud infrastructure….(More)”.

My City Forecast: Urban planning communication tool for citizen with national open data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Y. Hasegawa, Y. Sekimoto, T. Seto, Y. Fukushima et al in Computers, Environment and Urban Systems: “In urban management, the importance of citizen participation is being emphasized more than ever before. This is especially true in countries where depopulation has become a major concern for urban managers and many local authorities are working on revising city master plans, often incorporating the concept of the “compact city.” In Japan, for example, the implementation of compact city plans means that each local government decides on how to designate residential areas and promotes citizens moving to these areas in order to improve budget effectiveness and the vitality of the city. However, implementing a compact city is possible in various ways. Given that there can be some designated withdrawal areas for budget savings, compact city policies can include disadvantages for citizens. At this turning point for urban structures, citizen–government mutual understanding and cooperation is necessary for every step of urban management, including planning.

Concurrently, along with the recent rapid growth of big data utilization and computer technologies, a new conception of cooperation between citizens and government has emerged. With emerging technologies based on civic knowledge, citizens have started to obtain the power to engage directly in urban management by obtaining information, thinking about their city’s problems, and taking action to help shape the future of their city themselves (Knight Foundation, 2013). This development is also supported by the open government data movement, which promotes the availability of government information online (Kingston, Carver, Evans, & Turton, 2000). CityDashboard is one well-known example of real-time visualization and distribution of urban information. CityDashboard, a web tool launched in 2012 by University College London, aggregates spatial data for cities around the UK and displays the data on a dashboard and a map. These new technologies are expected to enable both citizens and government to see their urban situation in an interface presenting an overhead view based on statistical information.

However, usage of statistics and governmental data is as yet limited in the actual process of urban planning…

To help improve this situation and increase citizen participation in urban management, we have developed a web-based urban planning communication tool using open government data for enhanced citizen–government cooperation. The main aim of the present research is to evaluate the effect of our system on users’ awareness of and attitude toward the urban situation. We have designed and developed an urban simulation system, My City Forecast (http://mycityforecast.net,) that enables citizens to understand how their environment and region are likely to change by urban management in the future (up to 2040)….(More)”.

Balancing Act: Innovation vs. Privacy in the Age of Data Portability

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Thursday, July 12, 2018 @ 2 MetroTech Center, Brooklyn, NY 11201

RSVP here.

The ability of people to move or copy data about themselves from one service to another — data portability — has been hailed as a way of increasing competition and driving innovation. In many areas, such as through the Open Banking initiative in the United Kingdom, the practice of data portability is fully underway and propagating. The launch of GDPR in Europe has also elevated the issue among companies and individuals alike. But recent online security breaches and other experiences of personal data being transferred surreptitiously from private companies, (e.g., Cambridge Analytica’s appropriation of Facebook data), highlight how data portability can also undermine people’s privacy.

The GovLab at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering is pleased to present Jeni Tennison, CEO of the Open Data Institute, for its next Ideas Lunch, where she will discuss how data portability has been regulated in the UK and Europe, and what governments, businesses and people need to do to strike the balance between its risks and benefits.

—

Jeni Tennison is the CEO of the Open Data Institute. She gained her PhD from the University of Nottingham then worked as an independent consultant, specialising in open data publishing and consumption, before joining the ODI in 2012. Jeni was awarded an OBE for services to technology and open data in the 2014 New Year Honours.

Before joining the ODI, Jeni was the technical architect and lead developer for legislation.gov.uk. She worked on the early linked data work on data.gov.uk, including helping to engineer new standards for publishing statistics as linked data. She continues her work within the UK’s public sector as a member of the Open Standards Board.

Jeni also works on international web standards. She was appointed to serve on the W3C’s Technical Architecture Group from 2011 to 2015 and in 2014 she started to co-chair the W3C’s CSV on the Web Working Group. She also sits on the Advisory Boards for Open Contracting Partnership and the Data Transparency Lab.

Twitter handle: @JeniT

Digital Government Review of Colombia

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OECD Report: “This review analyses the shift from e-government to digital government in Colombia. It looks at the governance framework for digital government, the use of digital platforms and open data to engage and collaborate with citizens, conditions for a data-driven public sector, and policy coherence in a context of significant regional disparities. It provides concrete policy recommendations on how digital technologies and data can be harnessed for citizen-driven policy making and public service delivery…(More)”.

Open Data Charter Measurement Guide

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Guide by Ana Brandusescu and Danny Lämmerhirt: “We are pleased to announce the launch of our Open Data Charter Measurement Guide. The guide is a collaborative effort of the Charter’s Measurement and Accountability Working Group (MAWG). It analyses the Open Data Charter principles and how they are assessed based on current open government data measurement tools. Governments, civil society, journalists, and researchers may use it to better understand how they can measure open data activities according to the Charter principles.

What can I find in the Measurement Guide?

  • An executive summary for people who want to quickly understand what measurement tools exist and for what principles.
  • An analysis of how each Charter principle is measured, including a comparison of indicators that are currently used to measure each Charter principle and its commitments. This analysis is based on the open data indicators used by the five largest measurement tools — the Web Foundation’s Open Data Barometer, Open Knowledge International’s Global Open Data Index, Open Data Watch’s Open Data Inventory, OECD’s OURdata Index, and the European Open Data Maturity Assessment . For each principle, we also highlight case studies of how Charter adopters have practically implemented the commitments of that principle.
  • Comprehensive indicator tables show how each Charter principle commitment can be measured. This table is especially helpful when used to compare how different indices approach the same commitment, and where gaps exist. Here, you can see an example of the indicator tables for Principle 1.
  • A methodology section that details how the Working Group conducted the analysis of mapping existing measurements indices against Charter commitments.
  • A recommended list of resources for anyone that wants to read more about measurement and policy.

The Measurement Guide is available online in the form of a Gitbook and in a printable PDF version“

Open data work: understanding open data usage from a practice lens

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Paper by Emma Ruijer in the International Review of Administrative Sciences: “During recent years, the amount of data released on platforms by public administrations around the world have exploded. Open government data platforms are aimed at enhancing transparency and participation. Even though the promises of these platforms are high, their full potential has not yet been reached. Scholars have identified technical and quality barriers of open data usage. Although useful, these issues fail to acknowledge that the meaning of open data also depends on the context and people involved. In this study we analyze open data usage from a practice lens – as a social construction that emerges over time in interaction with governments and users in a specific context – to enhance our understanding of the role of context and agency in the development of open data platforms. This study is based on innovative action-based research in which civil servants’ and citizens’ initiatives collaborate to find solutions for public problems using an open data platform. It provides an insider perspective of Open Data Work. The findings show that an absence of a shared cognitive framework for understanding open data and a lack of high-quality datasets can prevent processes of collaborative learning. Our contextual approach stresses the need for open data practices that work on the basis of rich interactions with users rather than government-centric implementations….(More)”.